for her.
“Why don’t you put on your own shoes?” she said when Mary quietly held out her foot.
“My Ayah did it,” answered Mary, staring. “It was the custom.”
“Eh! You did not see my family,” Martha said. “We are twelve, and my father only gets sixteen shilling a week. My mother cooks porridge for them all. They tumble about on the moor and play there all day. Our Dickon is twelve years old and he’s got a young pony.”
“Where did he get it?” asked Mary.
“He found it on the moor and he began to make friends with it and give it bits of bread and some grass. And it follows him everywhere. Dickon is a kind lad, animals like him.”
Mary did not have an animal pet of her own. So she began to feel a slight interest in Dickon. When she went into the next room, she found that it was a grown-up person’s room, with gloomy old pictures on the walls and heavy old oak chairs. There was a good substantial breakfast on the table in the center. But she always had a very small appetite.
“I don’t want it,” Mary said.
“You don’t want your porridge!” Martha exclaimed incredulously.
“No.”
“You don’t know how good it is.”
“I don’t want it,” repeated Mary.
“Eh!” said Martha. “If our children were at this table!”
“Why?” said Mary coldly.
“Why!” echoed Martha. “Because they are hungry as young hawks and foxes.”
“I don’t know what it is to be hungry,” said Mary.
Martha looked indignant.
“Well, try it.”
“Why don’t you take that to your brothers?” suggested Mary.
“It’s not mine,” answered Martha stoutly.
Mary drank some tea and ate a little toast and some marmalade.
“Put on warm clothes and play outside,” said Martha. “It’ll do you good.”
Mary went to the window. There were gardens and paths and big trees, but everything looked dull and wintry.
“Who will go with me?” she inquired.
Martha stared.
“You’ll go alone,” she answered. “You’ll learn to play like other children do when they haven’t got sisters and brothers. Our Dickon goes off on the moor by himself and plays for hours. That’s how he made friends with the pony. He’s got sheep on the moor that knows him, and birds.”
Mary decided to go out.
“If you go round that way you’ll come to the gardens,” Martha said, pointing to a gate in a wall of shrubbery. “There are a lot of flowers in summer-time in that place. But one of the gardens is locked up. No one goes there.”
“Why?” asked Mary.
“Mr. Craven shut it when his wife died so suddenly. He didn’t let anyone go inside. It was her garden. He locked the door and dug a hole and buried the key. Oh! There’s Mrs. Medlock’s bell ringing-I must run.”
After she was gone Mary turned down the walk[13] which led to the door in the shrubbery. She was thinking about the secret garden. She wondered what it looked like and whether there were any flowers still alive in it. When she passed through the shrubbery gate she found herself in great gardens, with wide lawns and winding walks with borders. There were trees, and flower-beds, and evergreens, and a large pool with an old gray fountain in its midst. But the flower-beds were bare and wintry and the fountain was not playing.
She went toward the wall and found that there was a green door in the ivy. This was not the closed garden, evidently. She went through the door and found that it was a garden with walls all round it and that it was only one of several walled gardens. She saw another open green door, revealing bushes and pathways. The place was bare and ugly enough, Mary thought.
Presently an old man with a spade over his shoulder walked through the door leading from the second garden. He saw Mary, and then touched his cap. He had a surly old face. She was displeased with his garden.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“One of the kitchen-gardens,” he answered.
“What is that?” said Mary, pointing through the other green door.
“Another of them. There’s another on the other side of the wall and there is the orchard the other side of that.”
“Can I go in them?” asked Mary.
“If you like. But there is nothing to see there.”
Mary made no response. She went down the path and through the second green door. There she found more walls and winter vegetables and glass frames, but in the second wall there was another green door and it was not open. Perhaps it led into the secret garden. Mary went to the green door and turned the handle. The door opened quite easily and she walked through it and found herself in an orchard. She saw a bird with a bright red breast sitting on the branch. Suddenly the bird sang its winter song.
She stopped and listened to the bird and somehow its cheerful, friendly little whistle gave her a pleased feeling. Even a disagreeable little girl may be lonely. She was desolate, and the bright-breasted little bird looked into her sour little face which was almost a smile. She listened to it until it flew away. It was not like an Indian bird and she liked it. Perhaps it lived in the mysterious garden and knew all about it.
Mary was curious about it and wanted to see what it was like. Why did Mr. Archibald Craven bury the key? If he liked his wife so much why does he hate her garden?
“People never like me and I never like people,” she thought. “And I can never talk as the Crawford children can. They are always talking and laughing and making noises.”
She walked back into the first kitchen-garden and found the old man digging there. She went and stood beside him and watched him.
“I visited the other gardens,” she said.
“So what?” he asked crustily.
“I went into the orchard.”
“There was no dog at the door to bite you,” he answered.
“There was no door there into the other garden,” said Mary.
“What garden?” he said in a rough voice.
“The one on the other side of the wall,” answered Mistress Mary. “There are trees there-I saw the tops of them. A bird with a red breast was sitting on one of them and singing.”
To her surprise the surly face actually changed its expression. A slow smile spread over it and the gardener looked quite different. It was curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled.
He began to whistle. Almost the next moment a wonderful thing happened. The bird with the red breast flew to them, and alighted near to the gardener’s foot.
Mary went a step nearer to the robin and looked at it.
“I’m lonely,” she said.
The old gardener stared at her.
“Are you that little wench from India?” he asked.
Mary nodded.
He began to dig again.
“What is your name?” Mary inquired.
“Ben Weatherstaff,” he answered, and then he added with a surly chuckle, “I’m lonely myself except when he’s with me,” and he jerked his thumb toward the robin. “He’s the only friend I’ve got.”
“I have no friends at all,” said Mary. “I never had. My Ayah didn’t like me and I never played with anyone.”
Suddenly